The excitement of Halloween is back again this year – a little different due to Coronavirus, but also the same, with the usual abundance of sugary treats.
Seeing red and blue lips on “trick or treaters”, stained with the food colouring of sweets, right before bedtime is a little confronting for a Dentist.
So lets all keep our distance and brush our teeth so 2020 can only get better.
Courtesy of the Australian Dental association, the NSW Health has put out these guidelines to help families have a scary but safe time:
✓ Halloween should be a front-yard event, not a front-door event (keep it outdoors);
✓ Provide closed packaging for treats and instead of communal bowls, consider other ways of distributing treats like strewn along the front fence;
✓ Have hand sanitiser at the front gate;
✓ Trick or treat on a household basis (e.g. a supervising adult and children from the same household), rather than groups of young people together, with a maximum of 30 people gathering outside;
✓ Maintain 1.5 metre distance between people of different households – don’t all crowd together in a pack;
✓ Don’t share costume face masks;
✓ Stay home if sick;
✓ People isolating should not receive Halloween visitors;
✓ Practice good hand hygiene and use hand sanitiser after touching common surfaces;